Pro-choice Rally Jams D.c. 300,000 Demonstrate For Women`s Rights

April 10, 1989|By SANDRA JACOBS, Medical Writer

WASHINGTON -- In one of the biggest political rallies in U.S. history, more than 300,000 demonstrators marched on the Capitol on Sunday to tell the government and the Supreme Court that women have a right to an abortion.

They were joined by politicians and Hollywood celebrities for almost seven hours of rallying, sponsored by the National Organization for Women. The march was timed to precede a Supreme Court hearing that pro-choice and anti-abortion forces agree could significantly alter the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

``It`s the biggest march for women`s rights in the history of the country,`` NOW President Molly Yard said.

``We are saying, `Mr. President and the Supreme Court of America, we will never go back again,``` Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority, said in front of the Capitol where thousands thundered their support.

The march, which was to promote the Equal Rights Amendment as well as to support legal abortions, drew hundreds from South Florida.

Mitch Bernstein, 27, was one of 35 students from the University of Miami Medical School who came by chartered plane from Miami. Bernstein, wearing a physicians` coat and stethoscope, said that until Sunday he was part of ``the silent majority.``

``I came first as a concerned citizen -- it`s time we as the silent majority spoke up,`` he said, as folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary sang We Shall Not Be Moved.

``But also as a future physician, I`m concerned that the poor, uninsured inner city people would be dying if Roe vs. Wade were overturned,`` he said.

On April 25, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of a 1986 Missouri law that, if upheld, could overturn the 1973 decision.

One of Bernstein`s classmates, Rita Reik, president of the University of Miami Medical Women, was among the 50 or so speakers.

Like the many marchers who carried coat hangers, Reik reminded the crowd of a time when abortions were illegal.

``It is appalling to contemplate returning to the day when women return to dying of infection from coat hanger and back alley abortions,`` Reik said.

Organizers estimated the crowd at almost twice the official figure. Marchers were still streaming off buses and onto the march route as the final speakers made their way to the podium.

But not everyone at the rally favored access to abortion.

As marchers rounded the corner from the Washington Monument onto Constitution Avenue, they met anti-abortion protesters lining the sidewalks chanting and carrying banners. The two groups were separated by mounted police.

George Uribe, 20, wearing a T-shirt with the message ``Equal Rights for the Unborn`` said he thought anti-abortionists were making their mark, even though they were far outnumbered on Sunday.

``There may be half a million people here, but think about all the others who have taken part in Operation Rescue,`` said Uribe, chairman of Students for America, a group that supports the philosophy of demonstrating in front of abortion clinics. Operation Rescue demonstrated in front of clinics in Boca Raton and Dade County on March 31 and April 1.

Another counter-protester, Robin McGlouhn from Springfield, Va., carried a sign that read ``Adoption not Abortion,`` and called current access to abortion ``a vehicle whereby people don`t have to be as responsible.``

The anti-abortion activists set up a symbolic ``Cemetery of the Innocents`` on the Washington Mall containing 4,400 white wooden crosses and Stars of David. That, they said, is the number of unborn children killed daily since the Supreme Court legalized abortion.

At the Capitol, the marchers and speakers defended a woman`s access to abortion as part of a right to control her own destiny and her privacy.

``If women lose their right to control their own bodies, they lose their most fundamental rights,`` said Rep. Don Edwards, D-California.

Smeal`s message was among the strongest calls to activism. She urged the marchers to try to stop Operation Rescue in their home communities, to pressure U.S. approval of an abortion pill developed in Europe and to ``organize a political army to replace those who would make us go back to the Dark Ages.``

Before the marchers stepped off on the route, past the last pink-and-white flowers of the famous cherry blossom season, they heard from about 15 members of Congress, including Rep. Bill Lehman, D-Fla., who supported the marchers.

At the other end, the crowd waved in unison as they sang along to the suffragette song Bread and Roses with singer Judy Collins. They also heard from Cybill Shepherd, Whoopi Goldberg and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

``We must live with the consequences of our choices -- but they are our consequences and our choices,`` said Jackson, flanked on the podium by a son and a daughter.

For many, the rally was a family affair.

Some members of the Baby Boom generation marched with their children. Others marched with their parents. Busloads of college students -- with 900 from Columbia University alone -- and some high school students boosted attendance.

``It`s almost something to tell your kids about,`` said Michael Stark, 18, who boarded a bus at 5 a.m. with other students from The Horace Mann School, a private high school in New York City.

The largest and previous abortion rights rally in 1986 drew 125,000.

Jacob Nussbaum, 75, timed his drive home from Key Largo to Manhattan so he and his wife Sylvia could be at the march.

``We planned it so we could be here,`` he said. ``This is one of the most important issues in the United States today.``